This spring and the coming autumn will see a three fold increase in Victorian fuel reduction burns, which has a huge impact on Australia’s carbon emissions.
Nearly 400,000 hectares will be torched this year, and at emissions of 30 to 300 tonnes of CO2 (or more) per hectare, the CO2 emissions from these alone may be from 12 to 120 million tonnes a year. That’s more than 10% of Australia’s total emissions. This burning includes so-called ecological burns in Victoria which are planned for many National Parks and are supported by botanists.
The forest industry, however, does not include these emissions when tallying its contribution to sequestering carbon, which it claims amounts to 23 million tonnes of CO2 pa!
In the view of the International Panel for Climate Change and the Australian Greenhouse Office, the CO2 from fires is simply “reabsorbed” when the bush regrows. But common sense dictates that the interruption to carbon storage by fire leaves a sequestration deficit even if the bush recovers its storage capacity after each fire. The CO2 that would have been absorbed annually if the fire had not been lit is effectively an ongoing emission.
There are concerns in Victoria regarding the amount of burning and the disregard for the CO2 it produces. An email distributed by conservationists from Gippsland sought comment from botanists, environmentalists and others on the position of the Federal Department of Climate Change. In part, the email stated:
Carbon dioxide emissions from fires
Carbon dioxide emissions are not reported for the burning of forests or savannas under the UNFCCC or Kyoto Protocol accounting frameworks. Currently, by international agreement, we assume that, for the entire Australian forest and savanna estates, the carbon dioxide emissions released from fires are offset by the carbon sink effects from the regeneration of forests and savannas from previous fires over the long term. In other words, while the emissions from any one bushfire event may be substantial, the net effect of fire events across the entire forest area after regrowth factored into the equation is likely to be neutral in the long term.
Many replies to the statement expressed surprise that CO2 emissions were not accounted for, but one stood out. It was carefully written and supported the policy, despite the author’s determination to remain anonymous. However, their statement may reveal a “green insider” or a botanist’s knowledge of the issue:
The accounting rules are not necessarily closely related to what actually happens — they are more like convenient assumptions at this stage of developing comprehensive accounts. However, they do influence what happens on the ground — what counts is what people pay attention to.
There is very little information about fire and CO2 emissions.
From my perspective, if we think of forests primarily as permanent carbon stores, the impact of fire is usually relatively transient (over periods of decades to centuries). The main objective should be to maintain the ecological integrity of the forest, which in turn maintains the carbon stores in perpetuity (not necessarily at their maximum possible level, but at a level which can be sustained ecologically through variation in climatic and other conditions). If we start managing for carbon alone, all kinds of perverse outcomes will result.
The author apparently knows that ecological and fuel reduction burns are a significant source of CO2 emissions, like burning coal, but is determined that they are not seen that way.
The most likely “perverse outcome” in the context of this statement would be the end of ecological burning which some argue fosters of biodiversity and helps to combat climate change.
There is a school of thought widespread among botanists and foresters that fire is an essential tool in managing the Australian landscape. This view holds that it helps to maintain plant biodiversity. Aboriginal use of fire is frequently quoted, though the evidence cited is often thin and circumstantial at best, especially for forests. But the impact of fire on animals, stream flow and on diminishing rainfall in Australia has been the subject of little research.
A perverse outcome of current landscape management has been the recent rapid increase of the use of fire while its impact on CO2 emissions is being actively denied. The views of botanists and foresters have clearly held sway on other academics, the Greens, the CSIRO, the International Panel for Climate Change and the Australian Greenhouse Office.
It is illogical that fires in the forests of Southeast Asia are “of concern” to the Australian Government while we impose carbon taxes on the burning of fossil plants (coal), and then deliberately burn the crap out of living plants actively storing carbon in Australian forests.
What a specious argument.
This is all part of the natural cycle of existence.
What would you rather have? A wild fire that destroys everything in its wake or a controlled burn that leaves most plants living and for the others, provides the natural way of regenerating.
Next I expect you to be saying that baked beans causes flatulence which is a green house gas so let’s ban them. That makes about as much sense as the argument put forth in this article.
I totally disagree with this premise. Do you think we should include bushfires in our CO2 account? Large parts of Australia have habitat that is dependent on fire. Many eucalypts and casuarina can’t spread seeds nor germinate without fire. Most of the greenies and environmentalists that I know think we’re probably not letting the bush burn often enough, so that when it does burn it’s way too hot.
The concerns over south east asian burning are not their CO2 emissions. The concern is the contribution of the wood smoke to the Asian brown-cloud, and that it typifies an extremely poor famring practise. In some cases it is forestry waste in rainforests being burnt, a habitat not used to fire. Burning is also associated with slash and burn agriculture, known to destroy soil structure and contribute to erosion and run off.
The comment about the ‘perverse impacts’ is absolutely spot on. Try and tell Canberra residents that reduction burns can’t be carried out because we can’t afford the carbon credits. Or better yet giving home owners a bill for the CO2 emitted when their house burnt down.
Burning will occur whether or not it is done by National Parks staff. Over 50% of fires in the Wet Tropics area of north Queensland are the result of lightning strikes. The real issue is the timing and scale of burning. Here the Parks managers have much to learn. A misguided crusade to remedy the decline of the small amount of wet sclerophyll forest bordering the rainforest has resulted in aggressive burning of adjacent open forest late in the dry season. This is probably destroying biodiversity in the area, but we really don’t know because very little monitoring occurs, and even that is of poor quality. Much Aboriginal burning occurred early in the dry season, creating less carbon emission, and preventing wildfires later in the year. Even today satellite imaging reveals that a significant area around Kowanyama and Aurukun Aboriginal communities in Cape York retains a burning mosaic that snuffs out wildfires. Meanwhile the National Parks and pastoral properties across the rest of the Cape are regularly burnt by large, late and destructive fires.
Surely it is time for a win-win-win solution. Employ Aboriginal people to burn ‘country’, giving them some real income as well as ownership. Early burning will aid biodiversity, particularly if it occurs in the traditional way where the mosaic is made up of many different fire events somewhat randomly distributed. And to cap it all, early burning prevents wildfires by reducing fuel strategically, thus lowering carbon emissions. This is already being trialled successfully in the Northern Territory, and is urgently needed in other states.
To those who say this is a romantic reconstruction of a fantasised Aboriginal past, I say look at the current evidence around Aboriginal Communities in Cape York. Its happening there now.
The thrust of the article is that prescribed burning is not included in Australia’s carbon accounting. Without going into the peripheral debates that arise from this observation, maybe we should entertain the idea of attempting to create that prescribed burning account – as a purely technical exercise – and then let the debate begin.
In that way we can entertain and try to understand the views of those who push the benefits of Aboriginal mosaic burning in the Gulf country and Cape York balanced with the obligations of managers of peri-urban lands (near our metropolitan areas) who necessarily have a different agenda, seeing both (or all) in the light of our aspirations for carbon reduction.
When you have a dry winter and spring and then get out into the scrub and see some of the areas that haven’t been burnt for a fair while, you are left wishing there had been some fuel reduction burns done in years prior. When the fuel load is high and dry, when the fires come they burn HOT, big difference in the landscape the following summer and not a pretty one.